Posted on 04/20/2003 1:08:30 PM PDT by tessalu
In an exclusive on-line interview with Time's San Diego reporter, Jill Underwood, Scott Peterson's mother Jackie and father Lee defended their son against allegations that he murdered his pregnant wife, Laci. Excepts from their conversation:
Lee Peterson: We're grieving for the loss of Scott's wife and the baby. Our family is just devastated, and we feel an equal amount of pain for the Rocha family — Sharon and Ron and the whole family. But... our son is innocent. We know that. We've known it from day one.
Jackie Peterson: They know it too. They supported him fully until the police misled them, and that was to divide and separate him from them. He was their support. They were his support.
Lee Peterson: We're just very critical of the way the Modesto police has handled this investigation. They worked strictly on a theory that was dreamt up by this lead detective within the first eight hours, and they've pursued it backward from there and they have neglected so many good leads. Chief (Roy) Wasden made a comment during his news conference that on the evening before Christmas Eve, Laci's mother had spoken to Laci at 8:15 and that's the last time anyone saw Laci. Not true. There are several people who saw Laci.
Jackie Peterson: Several people who the police immediately tried to discredit the minute they came forward, so they're not coming forward.
Lee Peterson: And one of these gentlemen — and they are prominent people — he's a three-term council member up there and an attorney, and they saw her and they know her and the police have disregarded this. If it doesn't fit their theory, by God, they don't want to investigate it. I just can't be any more emphatic than that. And we're gonna pursue this thing.
Jackie Peterson: I would like people to use their common sense and look at the big picture, not just one incident that for three months the police have been telling them Scott did not go fishing. Now conveniently, the body has been found where he told them he went fishing. Why would he go 80 miles fishing, come home with a receipt and buy gas and food along the way, have a receipt of the dock and tell the police exactly where he went fishing — and the body would be there! That does not make sense. It's too damn inconvenient for that.
Lee Peterson: I would ask everyone to consider Scott's family. We're a good family. We don't have a record of anything.
Jackie Peterson: He doesn't either. You can look.
Lee Peterson: He doesn't. There was no domestic violence.
Jackie Peterson: No drugs. No financial problems. He worked three jobs to put himself through college and put his wife through college. They both worked hard to get everything they had, and they were enjoying it to the hilt. And they adored each other.
Lee Peterson: We were with them the week before Christmas, and you never saw a more loving couple.
Jackie Peterson: Laci's mother stated the same thing prior to the police going to them. All her family talked about how much they loved each other. How happy they were. How happily married people they were. And how we all wished we were like that. And then it all changed when the police went to them. And with what we know now, now they're bragging about their technique of deception that they learned to be detectives. And that means they can lie to you but if you say anything in the same sentence different, you've committed perjury. But they can say anything they want and tell their parents anything they want and they're grieving and they're looking to them for help.
TIME: What has Scott told you?
Lee Peterson: We haven't been able to speak to him. Again, we're grieving for the baby as Scott is for Laci. And we'd like to extend our best to the Rocha family. But I think if they search their hearts and really position themselves where they were before the police deceived them, and look at this thing in the wide context, they'll see the police have just bungled this investigation from day one. They can come after me. That's fine. But they've bungled this case.
Jackie Peterson: I think it's inappropriate for the police to be preening and patting themselves on the back for a good job of four months when they've done a cheap shot ... is what they've performed. Not only that, but they were preening and patting themselves when the announcement of who those bodies were. That's totally inappropriate. If they want to pat themselves on the back, they should have a party somewhere else. I'm just appalled at that, that our public people are like that. You have a district attorney calling this a slam-dunk before there's even an arraignment. I'm feeling like I'm living in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. I've just sick of this. (Her eyes are tearing up.) I think every man out there should be in fear if this is the way the police worked. If a crime happens to your wife, you'd better know you're with six people and they weren't drunk and they are good friends who are going to be able to put up with this. If they have any kind of shady character, the police will dismiss them and you'll be ruined.
TIME: What about the police saying that Scott tried to sell the house and her car?
Lee Peterson: You can take this thing from the very beginning. There's no motive. That $250,000 life insurance policy they had for two years and it was on each of them. They did that when they bought the home.
Jackie Peterson: It's not a policy. It was a retirement policy that has insurance attached. (The police) lied to Laci Peterson's mother about that.
Lee Peterson: He did not try to sell the house.
Jackie Peterson: We were looking at new cars the week before in Carmel. Laci wanted a safer car for her baby. The police took his car. He's making a payment on a truck that they've had now for four months. He's not a rich man. He works and they live the way they want to live, but they budgeted and they do it on their own and they never ask for anything.
Lee Peterson: They made it sound like Laci loved that car. Laci hated that car.
Jackie Peterson: She called it a piece of shit. The only time I ever heard a bad word out of her mouth.
Lee Peterson: We talked a lot driving on the Carmel trip the week before this happened, and they were gonna trade that car and get her a better car. Because the car would quit running.... As for the home, one of the ladies who ran our volunteer center in Modesto is in the real estate business. And she was one of favorites. ... And Scott was talking to her as a side remark and said "What do you think I could get for it."
Jackie Peterson: That's not what he said. He said, he didn't want to live there anymore. He said he didn't want to bring Laci home to that and what would they get out of it. He did not sign a listing. He did not go to a realtor.
Lee Peterson: Did you folks know that there's another pregnant lady that was floating in that bay in January? Another torso and two other pregnant women missing in that area. And that place is polluted with parolees.
TIME: What about the fear that police had that he would run to Mexico?
Jackie Peterson: I will tell you exactly what happened. He sold his car because his job has changed. He doesn't have to haul stuff anymore. And he couldn't afford it. He was making a payment, and we loaned him a car to drive instead. Apparently from what we now hear, the police had a device attached to it. His attorney knew where he was at all times. We talked to him every day. And the police asked us if we'd talk to him and we'd say, "Yes, we talk to him at least once a day." Sometimes, when they called, we hadn't talked to him that day yet. But he called us every night because we feared for his life because of how they've polluted this story. How the press and police have jumped on every little thing and made it what it's not. That's the story on that. They lost him.
Lee Peterson: He went to Mexico as you'll recall, maybe six weeks ago, on a business trip, came back and the police knew where he was.
Jackie Peterson: He's not going to leave his family and his life, and besides he's innocent.
Lee Peterson: It's another smear on him that he was going to run into Mexico. And how ridiculous. The kid lives here. They ran him out of Modesto. He can't use his home. They've got his car. Where's he supposed to go? He came to us and he was not running.
Yeah, a woman who could give better massages than 8 mo. pregnant, Laci.
This article was posted in today's San Jose Mercury News...
A pregnant woman vanishes. Part of her body, clad in maternity clothes, is found months later in San Francisco Bay. Family and friends wait for forensic science to confirm their worst fears. It's Evelyn Hernandez.
Her disappearance last May was not, like Laci Peterson's, an instant public sensation -- despite their similarities.
With so much attention again focused on the Peterson case, family as well as friends in San Francisco's Mission district say it is time for Hernandez's story to be told.
Both Peterson, 27, and Hernandez, 24, were eight months pregnant with sons when they disappeared. Both women were reported missing by someone they loved. And in both cases, foul play was suspected early on. But on the day Peterson's husband was arrested in her death, Evelyn's killer remained unknown.
``This is something we are still going through,'' said Berta Hernandez, no relation, a friend who mentored her in a drama program. ``They haven't found the person who did this.''
Evelyn Hernandez and Peterson shared similar, tragic deaths. But their lives were starkly different.
Evelyn was an immigrant and poor. She spent her teenage years in the Mission district, a heavily Latino neighborhood where she rented a small house with her mother. Most of her family, with the exception of a sister in the East Bay and another in Virginia, are in their native El Salvador.
When Evelyn was an infant, her mother left her behind when she escaped the civil war in El Salvador. She worked odd jobs in San Francisco to save enough to someday bring her daughter to America. Fourteen years later, Evelyn, the youngest of five daughters, joined her mother. But the union was troubled.
``To grow up without your mother, it's as though your mother is like a ghost,'' Berta Hernandez remembered Evelyn saying. ``It was very painful for them.''
But Evelyn found an outlet in the after-school theater program taught by Berta Hernandez. Always punctual and serious, Evelyn helped write adaptations of ``Romeo and Juliet'' to reflect an immigrant's struggles, recalled Carlos Petroni, who coached the amateur actress.
When she was 17, Evelyn became pregnant for the first time. Her mother did not approve and Evelyn moved out. The boy's father, a Navy man, left San Francisco never knowing about his son, Alex.
``It was very hard for her,'' Berta Hernandez recalled. ``In a sense she was alone again, in this new country with her new baby.''
Determined to survive
But Evelyn was determined to survive, she said. She worked as a drugstore clerk, a nurse's assistant and as a restaurant server in the tony Clift Hotel. She and Alex lived out of small rented bedrooms in cramped flats and homes. But everything she did, her friends said, was motivated by her love for her son.
``She was very focused on being a good mother,'' said Berta Hernandez, whose daughter attended Buena Vista Elementary School, where Alex was in kindergarten and Evelyn volunteered.
And she was excited about her second pregnancy.
On the night of May 1, Evelyn called her sister, Reina, to talk about a baby shower planned for her, according to police. She was expecting another son, whom she was going to name Fernando. Evelyn, who didn't have a car, was wondering how she would get to the East Bay for the party. During the conversation, she complained of labor pains.
Later that night, Reina, worried that her sister had gone into labor, tried to find her, Berta Hernandez said.
A week later, Evelyn's new boyfriend, Herman Albert Aguilera, reported her missing, police said.
The days and nights passed with the whereabouts of Evelyn and Alex not known. Alex's teachers grew concerned. They hadn't seen the punctual mother with her son. They were beginning to think something was wrong. So was Evelyn's small circle of friends, who'd heard about Aguilera, an older man who turned out to be married.
``We started to call everybody,'' Berta Hernandez said. ``We called her sister in the East Bay. She was crazy with desperation. She didn't know what to do.''
Evelyn had apparently told her sisters that she was leaving her boyfriend and would raise his child on her own. But Reina told her friends she didn't believe, as police did, that her sister had left town after a fight with him.
`Not possible'
Frantically communicating through a sign-language interpreter, Reina, who is deaf, said `` `No, that's not possible,'' Berta Hernandez recalled. ``She was not going to disappear. She was going to give birth.''
Their fears grew when police found Evelyn's wallet near a South San Francisco channel, a few blocks from where Aguilera worked occasionally as a limousine driver.
Two months later, on July 24, a badly decomposed torso was spotted in the bay along the Embarcadero, near Folsom Street. A worn elastic waistband clung to the body; the label read ``Motherhood.''
By September, forensic tests identified the remains as those of Evelyn Hernandez, said Holly Pera, San Francisco police homicide inspector. Alex has never been found.
Aguilera was initially interviewed by police, but has since refused to cooperate, Pera said, adding that he was adamant about hiding Evelyn's pregnancy from his wife. The 37-year-old airline mechanic has not been named as a suspect.
Aguilera, who is still married, could not be reached for comment.
But the homicide case is still open. Every week, Pera walks along the Embarcadero, showing fliers to passersby, asking if anyone remembers this woman.
One of their own
People in the Mission district do. She was one of their own, Berta Hernandez said. They would see her walking by the shops on 24th Street, at the panaderia -- the bakery -- or on the No. 48 bus. They had watched her blossom from a young, naive girl into a confident young woman and mother. When she disappeared, they posted fliers on street posts and laundromats.
In October, when police seemed no closer to a solution, hundreds of friends, neighbors and people who knew of her demonstrated near the police station, demanding more attention be paid to the investigation.
``This cannot be forgotten,'' said Berta Hernandez. ``She was not traditional, but she was a great woman, a great girl.''
I remember reading that Scott is the youngest of 7....sounds like the spoiled youngest child syndrome (my own psychology) to me.
"Scott did not do this thing....superpower of Al Capone did"
Jackie Peterson: She called it a piece of shit. The only time I ever heard a bad word out of her mouth.
That makes Scott sound more guilty. He's working hard, they're struggling financially, and she's complaining about her car being "a piece shit".
I can't link you to a previous thread, but I can tell you that there was one that ran which totally discredited the older couple claiming to have seen Laci.
There were major problems with their recollections. I read the thread with interest, but left it believing that they were just two people who had waaaay too much time on their hands, and were looking for their 15 minutes of fame.
He was in a densely populated area and any number of people could have seen him (and perhaps did and have submitted statements to the police detectives). He could have been cocksure that the body would not surface because he wrapped it in a tarp, tied concrete blocks to it, and dumped it way out in the bay.
I am guessing because he was worried someone might have seen him at or around the scene and might remember having seen him, and he was covering that potential situation. Also he didn't expect Laci's body to break loose from the concrete he had it tied to. That's what I would guess. All accomplished liars mix fact in with their fiction to make the fiction more convincing.
Actually, now that I think about it, you're probably right, the family might have requested it to get out their side of the story and to explain how Scott was framed.
What I was trying to say in my first post was that grieving families may make compelling TV but they don't always make sense. Like the one where the soldier was killed and the media went around crowing about the father blaming Bush for his son's death. Grief is a horrible emotion and I usually change the channel when I see someone distraught from it since I just wish they'd leave these poor people alone to grieve. I think some news outlets exploit it for ratings and/or to support their slant on whatever the subject is.
Thanks for the welcome. I've been around a long time, and had to get a new name because I moved. (If you change phone number and ISP--local ISP, that is--you have to "re-up.")
Why did you have to get a new name? I was able to keep mine when I went from dialup to cable although I tried to sign on from a different computer last week and couldn't remember my password to save my life.
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